


Little Talks

by mortalitasi



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Friendship, Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mahariel takes Anora on as her pupil in archery and soon learns the daughter has her father's knack for the shortbow.</p><p>Teaching someone else to be dangerous is a wonderful bonding experience. Lyna doesn't know why other people don't do it more often.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Talks

**Author's Note:**

> my in-game canon has changed a bit since this was written, but I still love it, so here it is!!

"Higher."

She can hear the wood of the bow creak as she does as instructed. The string strains and a muscle in her back pulls with a satisfying burn— the first days it had been nothing but a ravaging, raw ache. She hadn’t even been able to lift books properly, and when she had arrived irritable and sore for their third lesson, Warden Mahariel had only laughed that easy laugh of hers and put a hand to Anora’s back.

She’d expected reassurance, some hollow words of comfort, perhaps a meek offer to stop the lessons, but all Mahariel had said was “The worst is yet to come” and handed her the practice shortbow without preamble— she’d remembered then precisely why she liked Mahariel. 

The elf is a strict teacher, far more unforgiving than any childhood tutor Anora can recall. They’d all been frightened of her as a child, she thinks. She’d been a precocious girl, always ready to do more than needed, always willing to learn the unneeded and the forgotten, always prepared to go out of her way to do things properly.

She’d discovered early on that determination of the Mac Tir brand was a rare kind of hard-headedness that you couldn’t find just about anywhere, and determination either scared people or made them loyal. There were some exceptions, like the Warden, like Ser Cauthrien, and her father, but they were far and few in between, and she often wondered as a girl if she’d ever know what having a friend meant. 

Anora remembers her mother, gentle, soft-spoken, always smelling sweet like the packets of Andraste’s grace she would tie and hang in their wardrobe, and the way friendliness seemed to be second nature to her. While Father fumbled with kind words and struggled with pleasantries, Celia navigated them with the ease of a person prepared to see the good everywhere. That quality had gone out of Father a long time ago, she thinks as Mahariel steps closer and then pulls her elbow up till it is parallel to the ground.

"Always align the draw with your jaw," the Warden says, and then turns and easily demonstrates her point with that dark longbow of hers. Anora secretly hopes that one day her clumsy motions of nocking an arrow and following through will look as fluid as that. Mahariel looks at her from the corner of one eye, catching her attention without so much of a sound. 

"Do you see how I lead with the chin and judge the aim from the center of my mouth?" the elf asks, and Anora has to squint at her for a moment until she sees what Mahariel means. 

"Yes," she says, and then turns back to her own shortbow, trying to incorporate the new knowledge. The straw target standing in the courtyard seems sad and small against the stone wall. The ground around it is littered with her missed attempts at landing a shot, the one that stuck to the target’s leg ("Useful!" Mahariel had commented when she’d scowled at the outcome) and the Warden’s arrows that pepper the target’s head like pins stuck in a sewing cushion. 

"Follow your gut," Mahariel says, and watches  as she deliberates shooting. "It doesn’t matter if it hits or not, you’re still learning. The only way you will achieve success is through practice. Relentless practice."

"I’m used to being good at things I do from the very beginning," she admits, and lets the arrow fly. It whizzes straight past the target and buries itself in the ground just beyond the straw man’s feet. She growls in annoyance and lowers the bow. 

"Archery isn’t like that," Mahariel says, and then with a familiarity that is angering, draws back the string of her longbow, breathes out quietly, and releases. The arrow sails away with a sigh and nestles itself into the center of the strawman’s head, its fletching of goosefeather trembling before going still. Mahariel turns to her and thrusts out the longbow but does not let go. "Do you remember your Three Ways, Your Majesty?"

Feeling much like a chided child, Anora brushes the errant strands of blonde hanging down in front of her face with one hand and nods. “The Way of the Bow, the Arrow, and the Forest. Fly straight and do not waver. Bend, but do not break. Together we are stronger than the one.”

Mahariel smiles, all sharp teeth and satisfaction. “Keep to them and you will succeed in everything you try. It will be slow. It will be frustrating. Many times you will want to break your bow in half. Maybe you will. But the only way is forward, and you are stubborn enough to take it. I have every confidence that you will advance. You have your father’s touch for the bow.”

"A rousing speech, Commander," Anora says, smiling a small smile of her own. "It’s no wonder the nobles fell before you the way they did. An elf with a silver tongue, and a Dalish at that! They must be enthralled."

"The way one is enthralled with a new pet, yes," Mahariel responds, one dark brow hiking up over the other. "I suspect they only listen to me half as well as they do is because they think I might eat their children."

Anora laughs. “That sounds familiar.” She takes another arrow from the quiver at her hip. “Superstition is healthy for them. Keeps them in line.”

The elf snorts and crosses her arms as Anora lines up another shot. “It’s alright as long as you’re not the one with pointed ears.” 

Draw. Breath. “Speaking of which— “

Release. Blast. Another miss.

"— aren’t the Dalish supposed to be jealous guardians of all their secrets?"

Mahariel chuckles. “You’re in luck. You’ve met a very, very odd Dalish.”

"I’ve noticed. Does this mean you will not put a dagger between my esteemed husband’s eyes in a show of barbaric savagery for being assigned to Amaranthine?" she asks, twirling the next arrow in her hand. 

"I believe that would constitute as treason, Your Highness," she hears Mahariel saying as she stretches a sore arm and cracks her knuckles, her vambrace chafing against her skin. 

"A pity, that," Anora remarks quietly, and asks herself what she  _wouldn’t_  do for Ferelden. The silence her mind answers her with is unsettling, but not surprising. Like father like daughter, she thinks. Funny, if you thought about it long enough. Fortunately, she’s never been one for drawn-out bouts of reflection. 

"Drop your chin a little," the elf advises, and Anora does as she’s told. 

When she’s done appraising her latest miss, she goes for another arrow— her last. 

"I will go to Amaranthine," Mahariel says. "Not because Alistair— His Majesty— commands it, but because I have to. Ferelden… Ferelden— "

" —needs you?" she finishes, and the warden looks at her with surprise. 

"Yes. Precisely."

"You and I are more alike than anyone thinks, Warden Mahariel," Anora tells her, and she knows the pause means they agree. "My father once told me that it is the men that make the king, and not the king the men. I did not truly know what he meant until I married Cailan. I will not make the same mistake. I will not be silent. I will only accept the best. You will serve without fear of offense. I swear it."

Mahariel stands still for a moment and then lets out a long breath. “Your Majesty…”

"Anora. I insist."

"Anora, then." She sees what might be the shine of liquid emotion in the warden’s eyes but decides not to pay attention to it. They are both women that appreciate their privacy. "Thank you. I am very grateful. The time after the Landsmeet has been… difficult."

"Alistair has been a pigheaded fool, is what you mean," Anora says cuttingly, and raises the shortbow again.

"That is another way to put it."

"He sulks like a child and holds grudges like a hag. Sometimes he’s plainly insufferable."

"He… has gotten better about it," Mahariel says after a pause, and Anora shudders to think about what her husband would be like with worse control over his already silly temper. He doesn’t frighten her. She has dined with Father’s friends— men that have survived the cruelest winters Ferelden has ever suffered and seen the horrors of the Orlesian rule when the occupation was at its height— men that would make Alistair’s blood curdle in his veins. 

When he sputters and angers she feels no more endangered by him than she would a buzzing fly. She hasn’t had to swat him yet, but she hopes he will blunder enough one day to warrant the action. Some nights she lies awake beside him, untouched, feeling dirty even so in her nightshift, remembering how he talked about wanting to murder Father in front of the assembly for the sake of a petty tantrum, and it makes her so furious it makes all the words she could say go away. 

"My father," Anora begins quietly again, her fingers curling tightly around the shortbow’s handle, "will live out the last of his years working even now for a country that has despised him, betrayed him, and tried to kill him in turns. He will die fighting. I’ve known that since I was old enough to speak, but I never once thought he could go forgotten and hated, his honor tarnished. Whatever  _better_  Alistair has, it had damn well be something the Maker’s bride Herself can be proud of.”

"I agree, my lady," Mahariel murmurs and fixes her eyes on the straw target. "You may come to love him. I have seen stranger things happen." 

"I may," Anora says, lifting the shortbow and aiming carefully, a high, buzzing hum overcoming her hearing. There’s something right about this time that all the previous did not have. When she lets the arrow go she knows with a certainty unlike any other that it will find its mark, and it does— the arrowhead buries itself deep into the strawman’s heart, and she remembers times when she caught what used to run between her parents: the hopeful but forgiving light in Celia’s eyes, and the feeling she got of Father wanting desperately to return it but not knowing how. 

He had cared for her, but it had not been love. Anora turns to Mahariel, arms lowering. 

"Or I may not."


End file.
